The unthinkable has happened. Willie Nelson has quit smoking weed.
America’s second favourite stoner (come on, Snoop Dogg will always be number one) has revealed he’s giving up the green for health reasons after what he described as years of abusing his lungs.
Nelson, who has previously claimed to smoke marijuana from the roof of the White House, has credited the drug for saving his life in the past, but for now it seems it’s time to hang up his blunt.
The 86-year-old musician told KSAT-TV:
Singing out there for an hour is a good workout. Your lungs are the biggest muscle you got, so when you’re out there working, you’re working out.
I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past, so breathing is a little more difficult these days, and I have to be careful.
I mistreated myself since I was this big. I started smoking cedar bark, went from that to cigarettes to whatever, and that almost killed me.
I don’t smoke anymore. I take better care of myself now than I did then.
The country icon went on to address cruel rumours that he is ‘near death’, by telling the news outlet: ‘I don’t give a sh*t, excuse me. I’m here, I’m glad to be here, I’m lucky to be here.’
Earlier in the year, Nelson spoke about giving up cigarettes after his lungs collapsed in a near death experience, but he showed no signs of slowing down on the cannabis.
He told Rolling Stone:
I used to smoke two or three packs of cigarettes a day and drank whatever there was there to drink and I had pneumonia for or five times, my lung collapsed, I almost died, so I said, ‘Wait a minute, I ain’t getting that high off of Chesterfields,’ so I threw out the cigarettes, rolled up 20 joints, stuck it in there, and I haven’t had a cigarette since.
However, while the country and western star is certainly done with smoking, that doesn’t mean he’s done with marijuana in general. In the very same Rolling Stone interview, Nelson said he loves eating weed chocolates made by his wife.
As long as you keep looking after those lungs and belting out those country classics, that works for us, Willie.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.